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Don’t judge an album by its cover

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What vision do you see in your head when you think of an Eminem fan? Or a Beatles fan? Or a Blink-182 fan?
Or would you imagine a six-foot-tall ginger kid like me to be a Taylor Swift fan? Because I am.
What about a festival goer? What do you think of when you think of an Ultra fan? Or a Coachella fan?
Warped Tour?
Chances are, you have an image in your head of what they look like. Music stereotypes, like all stereotypes, are never something you should rely on to make character judgments of anyone. But sometimes music stereotypes come true in amusing ways. Just go to any indie or alternative show and count the number of guys with mutton chops sipping Pabst Blue Ribbon. Or go to Ultra and play “count the nearly-naked white girls.” You’ll lose track quickly.
These are just instances, though.
We don’t notice the people who break stereotypes as often as we notice the stereotypes themselves because they’re just normal people. Aside from visual stereotyping, though, marketing firm Exponential Interactive took a look at 6.4 million Britons’ online habits of seven categories and compiled the data linked to what kind of music they enjoyed. There are interesting trends in the data – for example, Jazz fans are 49 times more likely to be interested in fast food than others.
Classical fans are a whopping 255 times more interested in small business loans than others. And rock fans have a higher interest in Chevrolet cars.
It’s important to remember that these are trends and not at all 100 percent indicative of one person’s habits. That’s true of all things regarding stereotypes – we often see an individual stereotype occur once or twice, and that’s somehow enough reason for us to say “Aha! It is true!” But life is full of nuance, and we need to be aware of that.

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